impasto

See also: impastò

English

Still Life: Vase with Pink Roses is an oil painting on canvas completed by Vincent van Gogh in 1890, which makes extensive use of the impasto technique.

Etymology

Etymology tree

Italian impastobor.

English impasto

Borrowed from Italian impasto.

Noun

impasto (countable and uncountable, plural impastos)

1. (painting) The use of a thick-bodied paint to create peaks and crests that physically extend from the surface of a painting.
   • 1938, Norman Lindsay, Age of Consent, 1st Australian edition, Sydney, N.S.W.: Ure Smith, published 1962, →OCLC, page 63:

     He was thinking, ʽGot to get a subject where a man can weight the impasto in light. Paint thin against light. Got to remember that.ʼ

   • 1973, Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow, 1st US edition, New York: Viking Press, →ISBN, part 1: Beyond the Zero, page 5:

     […] all got scumbled together, eventually, by the knives of the seasons, to an impasto, feet thick, of unbelievable black topsoil in which anything could grow, not the least being bananas.

   • 2025 September 13, Jackie Wullschläger, “Portal to an abstract future or dry dead end?”, in FT Weekend (Life & Arts section), London: The Financial Times Ltd., →ISSN, →OCLC, page 15:

     These dully schematic yet sentimental misfortunes surround Van Gogh's “Sower”. He ploughs on, figure accentuated in deep impasto, across a field cast in blue shadow, chrome yellow corn merging with the sun.

Derived terms

• impastoed

Related terms

• pastose

Translations

the use of a thick-bodied paint to create sizable peaks and crests in an image

• Polish: impast m
• Russian: импа́сто (impásto)

Verb

impasto (third-person singular simple present impastoes, present participle impastoing, simple past and past participle impastoed)

1. (painting) To paint in thick-bodied paint; to paint in impasto style.
   • 1991, Joyce Nakamura, Contemporary Authors Autobiographical Series, Volume 14‎^[1]:

     "She looked tall to me, and slim, with delicate Semitic features, and a full mouth that she impastoed with red lipstick to play against her […] "

Anagrams

• ampotis, matipos

Italian

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /imˈpas.to/
• Rhymes: -asto
• Hyphenation: im‧pà‧sto

Etymology 1

Deverbal from impastare +‎ -o.

Noun

impasto m (plural impasti)

1. mixture, dough, kneading, crumb
2. impasto

Related terms

• impastare

Etymology 2

Borrowed from Latin impastus, from im- (“not”) + pastus, past participle of pascī (“to eat, to feed”).

Adjective

impasto (feminine impasta, masculine plural impasti, feminine plural impaste)

1. (literary, rare) not having eaten, fasting

Etymology 3

Verb

impasto

1. first-person singular present indicative of impastare

Anagrams

• imposta